> “We then realized they were a near perfect match to the cells of another species, the pullet shell.” The cells must have originated there before jumping into

> “We then realized they were a near perfect match to the cells of another species, the pullet shell.” The cells must have originated there before jumping into the golden carpets. > > Oddly, the pullet shells themselves show no signs of the cancer. They may have given rise to it, but they no longer suffer from it. Why? “One could imagine that the species-of-origin is now resistant to the tumor,” says Goff, “but we don’t know that.” I suppose it's possible that one species could have evolved to develop and spread cancers that are more transmissible to some competing species than to itself. In that sense there could be some long-term evolution going on.